The amount of sickness among the people at home is not generally
recognized, still less is it carefully measured and recorded. But the
experience and calculations of the Friendly Societies of Great Britain,
and of other associations for Health-Assurance there and elsewhere,
afford sufficient data for determining the proportion of time lost in
sickness by men of various ages. These Friendly Societies are composed
mainly of men of the working-classes, from which most of the soldiers of
the British army are drawn.
According to the calculations and tables of Mr. Ansel, in his work on
"Friendly Societies," the men of the army-ages, from 20 to 40, in the
working-classes, lose, on an average, five days and six-tenths of a day
by sickness in each year, which will make one and a half per cent, of
the males of this age and class constantly sick. Mr. Neison's
calculations and tables, in his "Contributions to Vital Statistics,"
make this average somewhat over seven days' yearly sickness, and one and
ninety-two hundredths of one per cent, constantly sick. These were the
bases of the rates adopted by the Health-Assurance companies in New
England, and their experience shows that the amount of sickness in these
Northern States is about the same as, if not somewhat greater than, that
in Great Britain, among any definite number of men.
The rate of mortality is more easily ascertained, and is generally
calculated and determined in civilized nations. This rate, among all
classes of males, between 20 and 40 years old, in England and Wales, is
.92 per cent.: that is, 92 will die out of 10,000 men of these ages, on
an average, in each year; but in the healthiest districts the rate is
only 77 in 10,000. The mortality among the males of Massachusetts, of
the same ages, according to Mr. Elliott's calculations, is 1.11 per
cent, or 111 in 10,000. This maybe safely assumed as the rate of
mortality in all New England. That of the Southern States is somewhat
greater.
These rates of sickness and death--one and a half or one and ninety-two
hundredths per cent, constantly sick, and seventy-seven to one hundred
and eleven dying, in each year, among ten thousand living--may be
considered as the proportion of males, of the army-ages, that should be
constantly taken away from active labor and business by illness, and
that should be annually lost by death. Whether at home, amidst the
usually favorable circumstances and the average comforts, or in the
army, under privation and exposure, men of these ages may be presumed to
be necessarily subject to this amount, at least, of loss of vital force
and life. And these rates may be adopted as the standard of comparison
of the sanitary influences of civil and military life.